


ad verbum

by TheBookshelfDweller



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Fluff, M/M, based off prompts, now with smut, these two idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-16 08:58:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3482264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookshelfDweller/pseuds/TheBookshelfDweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because, for them, actions were loud, but the words were always louder. Even the quiet ones. Even the unsaid ones.<br/>These are the things they say, over spaces and lifetimes. </p><p> </p><p>(A collection of one-shot ficlets based on a list of prompts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. things you said under the stars and in the grass

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so my beta joked that I should do all 23 prompts off a tumblr post, but I actually like her idea, so I'm doing it in breaks when I don't have time to write Wanderers but need to vent my feelings over these two.

* * *

**things you said under the stars and in the grass**

* * *

Looking back, Bilbo realises they’ve said some of the most important things in the simplest of places – in fields and meadows, in their garden, under the waning moon and the cold-lit stars.

It was there, under the stars and in the grass, that they said hello, the second time around. It’s such a small word for such big things like second chances and new beginnings. “Hello”, Thorin said the night after the Battle, approaching Bilbo, who was sitting on a small patch of green that survived on the slopes of Erebor. “Hello”, Bilbo answered, and they took it from there. Out of all the words that came later – the apologies and pleas – Bilbo would always remember that first hello. Such a small word. Such a big decision.  _Hello, yes, let us try this again._

The grass was dry and yellow the summer they decided to move to the Shire, and it crunched under Thorin’s weight the night he took Bilbo outside for a midnight stroll and asked if he’d like to go home. “I’ve been home for a while now, Thorin”, Bilbo said, and he’d never seen a dawn sky that blushed  sweeter than Thorin had when Bilbo kissed him. “We can make a home anywhere”, he whispered against Thorin’s lips. They moved from Erebor to the Shire a few weeks after Fili’s coronation. And all through the journey, the never left home.

 

The stars spelled out ancient blessings the night they said their wedding vows. Bilbo took Thorin into the garden the night before the official party, and they both walked barefoot, dressed only in their nightclothes. It was May and the land was in full bloom. Bilbo wove blades of long, springy grass until he had a green rope long enough to wrap around his wrist and Throin’s like a strange bracelet, looping it in an eight-shape. A promise of infinity. They both knew the vows they would say the following day, the official ones, written especially for the occasion – promises of comfort and protection, loyalty and devotion, and vows to tend to their life together as they would to any living thing. But right then and their, they said the only vows that mattered.

“I promise to do my best”, Bilbo said and Thorin said it back, and meant it.

 

The night before their trip back to Erebor for their first visit since they’d left, Thorin found Bilbo sitting in the grass under the oak that grew out of the acorn they’ve planted. “I’m scared”, Bilbo said. “What of, azyungel?” Thorin asked, sitting beside him. “That I’ll see everyone again, and they will steal my heart just like they did the first time, and then I will never want to leave again”, Bilbo replied. Thorin kissed the top of his head then and said nothing. They both missed their friends, but it was as sweet ache, reserved for the silent pre-dawn hours.

 

“I’m so sorry, Thorin”, Bilbo said when they learned the news of Balin’s death in Moria. He said the words in broad daylight, and maybe that’s why Thorin pushed him away and disappeared into the woods. Maybe in the sun such words burnt. “I’m sorry”, Thorin said later that night, leaning his forehead against Bilbo’s when he returned home and found Bilbo waiting at the gate. They stood like that for a long time, the grass whispering of ghosts and old friends.

 

The night of their tenth anniversary, they were giggling like children, lying side-by-side in the grass near the Water, drunk on ale, blackberry wine, and good spirits, searching out silly shapes among the constellations. “We’re doing alright”, Bilbo said, turning his head to look at Thorin’s smiling profile. The lines around his eyes were deeper than a decade ago, but Bilbo knew that his own face was also full of such marks of time passing. They’d become maps detailing extraordinary journeys. “I love you”, Thorin replied, gazing back, because they were doing so much better than alright. They were doing their best.

 

Unlike so many things around them, the things they said in those instances, under the stars and in the grass, were always gentle.

_Hello. Let’s try this again. We can make a home anywhere. I promise to do my best. I’m scared. I’m sorry. We’re doing alright. I love you._

The stars were a constant and the grass always grew back, year after year, and Bilbo always thought they were quite the same – enduring their winters and always surviving to see the spring.

 

And now, after everything has passed, it is where they say goodnight.

Looking up, here, at the end of their journey, Bilbo smiles. It’s been quite an adventure. And they’ve had a good run of it – half a decade together is no small feat.

The grass is soft and gentle, but not as gentle as Thorin’s embrace. He holds Bilbo the way the sky holds the moon – like he’s something brilliant and slowly slipping away. Thorin holds him like he knows what’s coming. Bilbo supposes he does. They both do. They both knew it was going to happen eventually – it was a simple matter of a small incompatibility of their separate designs. The critical fault in the way they were created – one to age more slowly than the other.

They’re in the garden and it’s well past midnight. Bilbo would feel bad for dragging Thorin out of bed, but they both know it’s only right for them to be here, under the open sky. It’s always been their way of doing this, ever since that first hello. Bilbo doesn’t know when they made it into a ritual, but somewhere along the way, it just became a silent understanding – them, the grass under their feet and the stars above their (greying) heads, and the words that could only survive under starlight.

And they have no more words to give each other. Maybe that’s how they know it’s time. They’ve exchanged all the words they had for each other, written over each other souls. They are each other’s stories. And they are finished. For now.

The last thing Bilbo sees is his favourite constellation – two loving eyes and a gentle smile. All around them, the grass whispers their lives back to them:  _Hello. Let’s try this again. We can make a home anywhere. I promise to do my best. I’m scared. I’m sorry. We’re doing alright. I love you._


	2. things you said when you thought i was asleep

* * *

**things you said when you thought i was asleep**

* * *

Not that many would guess, but between the two of them, it is Bilbo who always wakes up grumpy and grumbles about ‘ungodly hours’ and ‘just five more minutes’. Thorin has learnt early on it is not advisable to ask of his hobbit to carry a conversation any time before 9 am (and at least one cup of tea and several bites of toast).  
Thorin, on the other hand, never really shook the habit of waking early – a remnant of the olden days, when he’d been expected for lessons, then to stand with his grandfather in court, and later to make it to the workshops before sunrise and stoke the forges to keep his family fed. Old habits die hard, which is why Thorin always wakes before Bilbo. Which is how he finds out about the nightmares.

Bilbo doesn’t thrash around or whimper. No. He just goes very still, his face pinched and his breathing shallow and rapid. The first time it happens, Thorin tries to wake him, but fails. He calls out to him, but to no avail. But the more he talks the more Bilbo’s breathing slows down and the tension slowly seeps from his clenched muscles. 

So, it becomes a ritual, of sorts. Thorin wakes up and always finds Bilbo still asleep, his easy, slow breathing by far the loudest sound in the quiet morning of the Shire for a few minutes before it changes, and that’s how Thorin knows the nightmare has started. When it does, he starts talking.  
Bilbo sleeps - sometimes he sleeps on his back, face lax and blank, and Sometimes he curls up so that Thorin can only see the unruly curls on his head and the freckled slope of Bilbo’s shoulder, round and inviting like the gentle rolling hills around Bag End – and Thorin talks. In the muted in-betweenness of the early hours, words come easily. And when they do, they aren’t something special, not really. No dark secrets, or hidden fears. They’ve both said their ‘I love you’-s already – say them every day – and they’ve had their shouting matches.  
Instead, Thorin talks of simple things, everyday things – the way he plans to mend the hole in Bilbo’s third best pan, or the way the new stitch pattern Bilbo used to darn his socks holds much better than the regular one. He tells Bilbo about how difficult it is to find Bag End in the dark, and that sometimes he still misses Erebor. He asks Bilbo if he dreams of the mountains sometimes. And yes, sometimes Thorin tells Bilbo he loves him, simply because he can.“Your nose moves in the funniest ways”, he says. “Your braiding skills are awful. You should work on that.” Sometimes Thorin talks about the weather, trying to predict what’s it going to be like that day. It’s silly or it’s poetry. It’s Thorin’s heart swaddled in the body-warm bedsheets and streams of consciousness at 5 am. It’s their life, gloriously mundane.  
Whatever it is, it helps. Thorin talks, and Bilbo sleeps more easily. Some mornings he tells Thorin about the weirdest dream he had in which he was trying to fix a pan using a needle and thread, and Thorin laughs over the rim of his cup, looking at Bilbo’s slight frown and the way he shrugs away the confusion, turning his attention to breakfast. It’s the rising sun sitting at the kitchen table, eating porridge. Thorin would keep at bay more than bad dreams for this.  
It goes on, until the morning of Bilbo’s birthday – the first he’s decided to celebrate since their return to the Shire.  
“It’s going to be sunny today, ghivashel. No need to fret about the party”, Thorin says to Bilbo’s sleeping back. Bilbo calms down very quickly these days. It’s a ridiculous prediction, really. The sky is still dark and there’s no way to tell what the day will bring.  
It brings rain, of course. Thorin is convinced the weather is trying to spite him specifically.  
But oddly enough, at breakfast, Bilbo looks out at the downpour and smiles into his tea.  
“I didn’t think rain would be good news”, Thorin says, sitting down. “Unless you’ve invites some particularly hateful guests tonight and you wish to see them either cancel or get soaked to the bone.”  
“Not at all”, Bilbo replies.  
“What then?”  
“Oh, nothing.” Well. That tone is most certainly too innocent to be true. “It’s just that your weather forecast this morning was wrong”, Bilbo says. “But don’t worry. You weren’t off every time. And I promise to work on my braiding technique”, he teases. “But only if you never call my nose funny again.”  
Bilbo comes to stand in the space between Thorin’s tights, speaking more quietly now. “Yes, I dream of the mountains sometimes. We could go there again, one day.”   
He ducks down to kiss the shocked expression off Thorin’s lips. “Thank you”, he whispers, looking at Thorin with such unbearable fondness. “It helpe,d”  
“What did?” Thorin’s voice is faint, as if they’re still in bed, and Bilbo is still asleep like he is every morning…well, or so Thorin thought, it would seem. Bilbo’s smiling mouth is his horizon.  
“The things you said when you thought I was asleep.”


	3. things you said with no space between us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, so...this happened. Smut ahoy.

* * *

### things you said with no space between us

 

* * *

“Count”, Bilbo says.

 

It's late and the fire's all but gone out already, shrouding the room in warm darkness. The Shire darkness, just like all things in the Shire, is softer than that in Erebor. Thorin can't explain it, but he suspects it has to do with all that soft earth and trees that bend in the wind. There's little rock here, no mountain to stand immobile and firm. It's...different. Thorin isn't sure if he likes it, but, to be honest, he couldn't care less at the moment.

 

Because, he's finally here.

 

Bilbo stands in front of him, in only his nightshirt and small-clothes, pale and translucent in the moonlight that spills through the window, telling Thorin to count kisses for the days spent apart. They got separated on the road a week ago, with Thorin having to stay in Rivendell on urgent business and Bilbo making his way forth to Bag End without him.

 

There was too much space between them and it must now be erased until there's none left.

 

“One”, Thorin says, bending down to capture Bilbo's lips, which slip open instantly. Bilbo reaches up to cup Thorin's face in his hands, and it feels like coming home. It's a hello-kiss, long and sweet, and just on this side of _more_. Like removing one's boots upon entering the house, it's comfortable and familiar, a good habit, but only an introduction.

 

Because it's been seven days since they've seen each other last, and it's been a long journey, neither tries to keep it slow, even though that's the whole point of counting.

 

“Two.” Thorin barely manages to get the word out before Bilbo bites down on his lip and tangling his finger's in Thorin's hair, gently undoing the braids there – beads holding them in place already gone. Thorin's hands slide to Bilbo's sides while Bilbo rakes his over Thorin's chest, bunching up his tunic. This kiss is hungrier, open-mouthed and slightly reckless. It's a kiss that swallows words, and Thorin feels dizzy behind closed eyes. He slips his hands under Bilbo's nightshirt and gasps as his hands find warm skin.

 

Air is a stupid necessity, if you ask Thorin, but a necessity nonetheless, so eventually they part, foreheads pressed together and hands roaming over bodies like wild cartographers charting familiar territory all over again. There's entirely too much clothes on both of them, so they decide to rectify that. Bilbo steps back from Thorin shortly and shucks his nightshirt, while Thorin makes quick work of his tunic.

 

“Three”, Bilbo chimes, sounding as breathless as Thorin feels, as he steals another kiss from Thorin, quick but fierce, just like himself. His clever hands undo the ties of Thorin's breeches and when he palms the hardness there Thorin pretty much forgets what number comes after three. Somewhere along the way, they start moving towards the bed, like a pair of clumsy but oddly well-coordinated dancers.

 

Thorin ends up on his back, hair all over the pillow, dark ink stain on the crisp white of Bilbo's sheets, writing out their own private history, as intimate as a poets first draft.

 

“Four”, they say in unison as Bilbo climbs onto the bed as well, bending down just as Thorin is pushing up, catching him around the waist. Bilbo braces himself on Thorin's shoulders and licks at the seam of his lips, and then inside Thorin's mouth, loving and hot, as if Thorin hasn't already let him into every hidden corner of himself, as if it's their very first time.

 

“Five”, Thorin's voice breaks as Bilbo moves atop of him and rocks against Thorin's hips, kissing Thorin's collarbone, just above his heart. They're both hard and it's frighteningly easy to just keep going like this, skin against skin, and a bit of cloth caught in-between, moving in unison against each other. But not yet. Not yet.

Fingers tangled together and arms raised above Thorin's head on the too-soft mattress of Bilbo's bed, they stay still for a moment, just breathing against each other's mouths. There's almost no space between them for anything else, least of all words, but there's still kisses to be counted so obviously they must go on.

 

“Six”, Thorin breathes out, pushing up to kiss the side of Bilbo's neck that's just within his reach. He sucks a bruise into the tender skin there and groans when Bilbo bucks against him. He peppers Bilbo's neck and shoulders with butterfly-kisses, basking in the little sounds that draws from Bilbo.

 

“Seven” Thorin plants a kiss on the inside of Bilbo's wrist. Bilbo shudders and he drags his hips against Thorin's, the fabric of their small-clothes adding to the friction.

 

“Seven”, Bilbo echoes, meaning _I love you,_ and then he's kissing Thorin full on the mouth, all teeth and tongues and rightness, giving up on words altogether, not enough space for even air between them. Bilbo's lips sting and his chest feels too small. It's an entirely glorious feeling.

 

The sheets rustle softly under their moving bodies, ripples of fabric like white-tipped waves rocking them back and forth. Their moans are lost somewhere in each other, spilling over one pair of lips onto the next, pressed close so nothing can escape.

 

“Thorin...”

 

Bilbo buries his head in the crook of Thorin's neck as Thorin pushes down the thin layer of clothes still covering him and takes Bilbo in hand, pulling and stroking. Bilbo pants against his skin, his thighs trembling where they're spread around Thorin's body, and Thorin has to bury his head into Bilbo's hair and breath deeply to stop himself from falling apart right then and there, with the sound and feel of Bilbo's moans reverberating across his skin.

 

But as soon as he manages to get some air into his lungs, Bilbo lifts his head just enough to look at Thorin, his eyes intent and burning, bruise-coloured blue, and well...Thorin can just stare back as he moves his hand over Bilbo's cock, mesmerised by the way Bilbo's lips are parted, red and bitten, his breathing fast and his eyes relentless as he gazes down at Thorin. Despite the fact that Thorin is touching Bilbo much more purposefully at the moment, it still feels as if somehow it is Bilbo driving Thorin to the edge, unravelling him in the most obscene way, intimate to the bone and all the more terrific for it.

 

He can see every flicker of pleasure in Bilbo's eyes, hear him getting closer in the hitch in his breathing. Bilbo rocks into Thorin's grip, groaning quietly at the feeling. His lashes flutter, but he never shuts his eyes, and Thorin is almost certain he's burning alive under Bilbo's gaze. He doesn't mind it at all. Bilbo is silent, and so is Thorin, but somehow that makes it all the more maddening, just the sounds of ragged breathing and the slide of skin.

 

Bilbo twists in Thorin's grip, then, and before Thorin has a chance to catch his breath, he slips a hand into Thorin's pants and wraps it around the hardness there. Thorin's lost. Or he's found. Either way, he gasps, closing his eyes and arching his neck, but soon he opens them again and looks back at Bilbo.

 

As if by reflex, their hands find each other again – one pair on the pillow beside Thorin's head, and the other wrapped around both of them, fingers laced and moving in sync. They're too far gone for proper kisses now, so they make do with what they can reach – lips and cheeks and necks – as their rhythm grows steadily more erratic.

 

“Oh...” is all that Bilbo says as he comes, and maybe it doesn't even count as a word, but that's alright, because it sounds like a world hidden in a sigh to Thorin. Bilbo's eyes remain wide throughout, only closing in the very last seconds as he shudders. Thorin works him through it, hand gentle and lips finding the softest places, and it's is Bilbo's second 'oh' – raw and content – combined with their still-moving hands, that sends Thorin over the edge too. Distantly, he can hear Bilbo saying words to him, but he can't make them out, as if he can't hear them when they're this close together, the same way one cannot see objects held to close to the eye.

 

Later, they're a tangle of limbs, pressed close together in a warm nest of sheets, and they both fall asleep before Thorin has the chance to ask Bilbo what he said, when they were close like that, no space between them. But it doesn't matter. Whatever Bilbo said, Thorin is sure he believes him.

 

 

 


End file.
